TL;DR: R-Type Dimensions III is switching from a Game Key Card release to having the full game on the card. Because of this, the physical release MSRP is increasing by €10. They will honor the old price for existing pre-orders.
Initially, the publisher said that this was made possible by the new smaller capacity cartridges that Nintendo just announced. Later, they updated the press release to remove any references to cheaper cartridges and instead said that Nintendo did not announce anything.
Key cards are so fucking stupid. You dont get the convenience of digital or the ability to play the cart offline. Its like the worst of both worlds.
They are at least resellable, which would not be true of pure digital. One could also argue that even regular media don’t always contain all the content needed to run the game (require a download to start it), and are not fit for archival purposes. I agree with other points. To me it’s especially stupid that you have to pay for your storage, and microSD express cards are not cheap (and games are getting pretty big, which is not weird).
They could just have made their digital sales resellable and done without the key cards entirely. But of course they won’t, because why would you accommodate your customers eh?
If they don’t have to, they won’t. It’s not like their competitors are any better.
The exact opposite to GOG !
So the only way they make sense is if they replace the simple code some collectors edition have, since you can’t then sell the physical game that you bought.
For all other cases, it’s a downgrade.